St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Minnesota, told a co-habitating couple that they couldn't co-habitate during a student trip to Australia. The sulking couple refused to go at all. Now there's a campus debate raging. I'm more interested in the legality, which some questioned. I couldn't imagine how such a thing would be legally actionable, and according to an expert quoted in the article, it isn't:
Legally, St. Thomas seems to be on firm ground.
Religious institutions have had employment decisions based on moral conduct upheld, as long as that was the real reason for the decision and the rules were evenly applied to men and women, said Marie Failinger, who teaches law at Hamline University and edits the Journal of Law and Religion.
These conflicts have been an issue with religious Protestant universities more often than Catholic institutions, but "it's a growing trend for Catholic universities to take their Catholic identity more seriously," she said. "Maybe you'll see more of these cases in the future."
Link.
